February 27, 2019 at 18:05

Invidious - alternative YouTube frontend

“ Invidious ” is a web front-end (roughly speaking, a web client) for a YouTube site. The project code is written in the programming language Crystal , uses the PostgreSQL DBMS and is distributed under the free license AGPLv3 +.


A little bit about the development of the project


At the moment, Invidious has been developing for more than a year (for comparison: Crystal is more than four years old), but only in July last year, its author, Omar Roth, announced his project on Reddit, which almost immediately attracted some attention, since shortly after this, the most popular analogue - the HookTube web service - ceased its "normal" work, due to legal requirements submitted by Google (and after all, just a week before this event, the first mention appeared on the hubof this service!). The main "purpose" of HookTube was proxying user requests to Google (YouTube) servers, which, although it improved the privacy of users, but also allowed them to watch and download any videos (including those having geographical restrictions, for example), for obvious reasons, not I really liked Google. And since HookTube completely relied in its work on the official YouTube API (unlike the same Invidious), it was not difficult for Google to prohibit HookTube to use it in such a “brazen” way. After which, of course, there was a wave of indignation from the users of the service (yes, especially on Reddit). And although HookTube is still continuing its work, he, according to the author himself, has now become nothing more than a lightweight version of YouTube,. As a result, the popularity of the service began to decline , and many users concerned about such changes drew attention to the Invidious that appeared just in time, which will be discussed later.



Key Features


The author of the project adheres to the monthly cycle of releasing releases that are not associated with anything other than the release time (the 11th of each month), and are aimed at providing administrators of their own "instances" Invidious with more or less relevant and stable "slices" of the source code , but otherwise, they are more likely to be of formal importance. Therefore, we will move on to the most interesting features and capabilities of Invidious, available today, at the time of the release of the 14th release of the project.


  • No ads;
  • Self-hosted (i.e. can be installed on your server);
  • Lightweight design and the presence of a dark theme;
  • The ability to subscribe to YouTube channels;
  • To use it is not required to have a Google account;
  • Does not use the official YouTube API (like projects like youtube-dl and NewPipe );
  • It does not require the inclusion of proprietary JavaScript, and most functions do not require inclusion of JS at all;
  • Ability to save and edit browsing history;
  • Internet traffic saving mode and audio mode (also suitable for background playback on mobile devices);
  • RSS support (for YouTube channels and user feeds)
  • The interface is fully localized in Russian, Italian, French, German and Arabic (WIP);
  • The ability to embed videos from Invidious on the pages of other sites. Both directly and from YouTube (using a special userjs script );
  • Support for reading comments on videos written on YouTube and / or Reddit;
  • Allows you to set the default playback settings (speed, quality, subtitles, etc.);
  • Ability to import / export subscriptions (including in NewPipe format), browsing history and settings;
  • Lock bypass, if the video is not available in the country of the user;
  • Extended statistical information about the video is available: accurate rating, percentage of involvement, Wilson score .

It is also worth noting that Invidious provides its own API for developers . Currently, the Invidious API uses the FreeTube app , MusicPiped music player and CloudTube website . Invidious support was added in youtube-dl version 2019.02.18.



Soon, support for YouTube video annotations completely disabled (January 15) by Google is expected . This was made possible thanks to the fact that the community had previously created an annotation archive for about 1.4 billion videos.


TL; DR. Give it a try already!


There are several “instances” of Invidious, including the official Invidio.us ( blocked on the territory of the Russian Federation; it has a mirror in the Tor network ), financial support of which is provided by user donations. User instances are available:



Those who want to quickly install Invidious on a server with Ubuntu, Debian or CentOS can do this using the Invidious-Updater script .

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